ACLU says Pasco city election system violates law

The city of Pasco’s current election system violates the federal Voting Rights Act, diluting the Latino vote and keeping Latinos from being elected to the city council, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

However, the city has the opportunity to amicably resolve the matter, it said in a recent letter to the Pasco City Council.

City officials have been concerned about the issue and have supported voting rights bills in two sessions of the state Legislature that would allow the city to adopt a district-based system. Current law limits the voting changes that Pasco, a non-charter code city, can make.

Pasco city attorney Leland Kerr said he was encouraged by the letter from the ACLU.

“I would much rather work with ACLU than litigate with it,” he said. “We welcome their input.”

The ACLU filed a lawsuit against Yakima in 2012, leading to a federal court ruling in favor of the ACLU that an all-district system be adopted. In the first election since the ruling, three Latino candidates were elected to the council.

Pasco uses a hybrid system of district and at-large voting now, just as Yakima did before the ACLU lawsuit.

Two members are picked at-large and candidates must file for election to represent one of the five city districts. Voters cast ballots only for their district race in the primary, but all city voters then cast ballots for district candidates who advance to the general election.

“Since the election system was adopted 45 years ago, not one Latino/a has been elected to the city council when running against a non-Latino/a candidate,” said the ACLU letter. “Only one Latino has ever even served on the city council, and he was first appointed to the council and subsequently ran unopposed.”

The lack of representation cannot be attributed to political apathy or disinterest, the ACLU said. A Latino candidate has run almost every time a city council slot has been up for election in the past 15 years, and six Latinos ran for city council in the past election.

“In 2015, the Latina candidates who advanced from the primary election were largely favored by the Latino community, but due to Pasco’s election system, were ultimately unsuccessful in the general election,” the ACLU said.

It contracted with a nationally recognized demographer who found there were several ways that Pasco could be divided into seven districts, with the voters in each district electing a representative of that district to one of the seven city council seats.

His study found that Pasco could easily create three districts in which Latinos would make up a majority both in sheer population and in the population of citizens of voting age, the ACLU said.

Pasco now is working on realigning its voting district boundaries as it does every two years.

City staff are recommending options to ensure that at least two of the city’s five voting districts have a Hispanic majority. In addition, the votes for the two at-large districts would have a Hispanic influence, Kerr said. About 31 percent of the Pasco voting-age population is Latino.

In addition, a change is being considered to allow only the residents of its current five districts to vote for the candidates from their district in the general election.

Although current state law does not allow Pasco to change to a purely district-based system, the city has looked at the possibility. It found a seven-district city could create some issues, Kerr said.

They would be relatively small districts. Retaining equal population in each district could be difficult as the population continues to expand to the west, he said.

There also is a concern that with population-based districts, the size of the population does not always correlate with the number of people eligible to vote. Some districts could have much smaller pools of voters electing council members than other districts.

Further complicating the issue is a U.S. Supreme Court case that city officials are watching. It is expected to define “one person, one vote” by determining whether districts could be drawn by eligible voter population rather than total population.

The ACLU is offering to help Pasco evaluate its legal and political options, particularly if the pending Washington Voting Rights Act does not pass to allow the city to change its voting method to a single-member district.

A telephone conference call was held between the ACLU and Pasco city officials on Feb. 23, and the March 2 letter suggested a follow up meeting in person to discuss how Pasco can comply with the law.

Kerr responded with an email requesting the information from the professional demographer hired by the ACLU to study before the proposed meeting. Pasco also had a professional demographic study done.

This story was originally published March 4, 2016 at 6:56 PM with the headline "ACLU says Pasco city election system violates law."